Nasta‘liq Inscriptions of Masoudieh Mansion And their Attribution to Zarrin-Qalam

Masoudieh Mansion-Garden was built in 1295 A.H. (1878 A.D.) In the middle of Mansion-Gardens located in the Dowlat neighborhood and in the north of Dar-al Khelafe Naseri (Tehran in the time of Naser al-Din Shah) by order of Masoud Mirza, known as Zell-all Sultan (The Shadow of the Sultan), who was the oldest son of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. The palace was constructed by Reza Gholi Khan known as Seraj-al Molk as the foreman of the construction workers. This mansion is consisting of an exterior (Beroni), interior (Andaroni), and different other parts which is located on the western side of Nezameyeh Garden and south of the entrance hall of the Negarestan Garden. The complex was at the disposal of the Ministry of Education from 1924 until 1998 and until then is at the disposal of country’s cultural Heritage Organization. Different arts of the period, like tiles, woodcarvings, inscriptions, and others were used in this mansion by the most prominent artists of that era. The inscriptions of this mansion, all of them written in Nasta‘liq style of calligraphy as the most common style of inscriptions in Qajar era, in addition to their artistic quality, are the representations of the building's history through the content of texts. Among all the seven inscriptions of this mansion, just two of them were signed by the calligraphers. The first signed inscription of the Masoudieh is the main sidewalk entrance inscription with the sign of Abdolhussein Zarrin-Qalam as the calligrapher at 1295 A.H. The other inscription with a signature belongs to about forty-eight years later when this building was purchased by the government in order to be used as the ministry of Education and was signed by Abol-Ghasem as the calligrapher and Haji Hussein Kashi-Saz as the tile maker on the entrance of carriage door in 1924. These inscriptions of the mansion were implemented in different contexts and styles like tiles, wood mosaics, Stucco, carvings on the stone, and calligraphy behind the glass. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of inscriptions as decorative elements, the style of calligraphies, and their attribution to Abdolhussein Zarrin-Qalam or other calligraphers of the time, as well as the meanings and connotations of texts and poems. The research methodology is qualitative based on data collection and library studies. In this research, we first investigated the field through photographing and documenting the inscriptions of the Masoudieh mansion, and based on visual and written documents; we proceed to read the inscriptions through a comparative study of others’ works. Although there was not enough evidence of other works of Abdolhussein Zarrin-Qalam as the main calligrapher of the inscriptions, we could find two manuscripts of this artist. Through comparative studies of this building’s inscriptions and Zarrin Qalam’s manuscripts and other contemporary artists like Mirza Gholamreza and Mirza Amo, based on the type of calligraphy, composition, and date of these inscriptions, the probability of assignment of other unsigned inscriptions of the palace to Abdolhussein Zarrin-Qalam was concluded.